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| Home > History
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| | History of Athletic Game
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Every school going kid knows Olympics originated in ancient Greece, but few people know that there were athletic sports much before that too! The first civilizations in Old Egypt and Mesopotamia, several hundred years before the games in ancient Greece, had a tradition of athletics. This is proved by literary and iconographic sources describing athletic scenes as far back as 3,000 BC.
The athletic activity of the ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians are recorded on temples and tombs.
Games like wrestling, boxing, acrobatics, stick fighting, archery, boating, equestrian events and ball games were played in ancient Egypt.
Besides Old Egypt and Mesopotamia, other civilizations, including pre-classic Greece, already practiced athletic activities before the Ancient Olympic Games.
The Olympics, believed to have started by around 776 BC in Olympia lasted for more than a thousand years. However, the religious ceremony that followed the Games is even older and might be even from the 13th century BC.
The games were held every four years, modern Olympics doing justice to the ancient system.
Not exactly justice, as, in the good old days, they happened only in Olympia, had fewer games, and only men who could speak Greek could compete.(contestants had to run naked too!).
Almost all the men in entire Greece (women were forbidden) flocked towards Olympia to watch the games. The Olympic stadium had a capacity of around 45000 - 50000.
However, the athletes had to arrive at Olympia one month before the official start of the Games and they spent the month training morally, physically, and also spiritually under the judges` supervision. Only whom those the judges considered qualified, could compete in the games.
 Though it required for the men who competed to compete naked, that wasn`t the reason why women were forbidden from entering Olympia. Olympia, the city of Greek God Zeus, was a place sacred to men.
That is why perhaps, in the chariot competitions, held outside the sacred area of the city, women were allowed. There were also female festivals, where males were banned, and the most famous was Heraean, in Argos, that also included javelin-throwing competition.
The first 13 Olympics had running as the only sport. The race length was one "stadia", about 85 meters. Later longer races were included like the "diaulos" (365 meters) and the "dolichos" (24 "stadias" or 2 km). In 708 BC, pentathlon and wrestling were included, in 688 BC the boxing, and in 680 BC the chariots racing.
The winner received a simple crown made by olive branch. However, the winners turned into celebrities and often had benefices like free food for the rest of the life and the reservation for the theaters first accent. They even were given tax-free concessions, and sometimes, even received cash contributions as awards.
Olympics was not the only game festival to be held in ancient Greece; there were the Isthmians, The Nemeans, and The Pythians. The Olympic Games was by far the greatest event. The Greeks celebrated through games, in the belief that the spirits of the departed would be grateful observing such spectacular feats, as they did during their earthly life.
Initially, such festivals were just sacrifices, which were then followed by the games. Gradually they grew into religious festivals, which began to be observed by an entire community and was celebrated near the shrine of the god in whose honor they were instituted. The idea then developed that the gods themselves were present but invisible and delighted in the services and the contests.
The competition of a single foot race, called the "Stade", was held for the first 13 Olympiads. The word Stadium arrived from the word Stade.
 Coroebus of Elis, the first recorded victor, from the Olympics was a cook. This was in 776 BC. The athletes from Elis were undefeated at the games for 13 Olympiads. In the14th Olympiad a second race was added. The second race was 2 stades, double the length of the stadium. An endurance race in the 15th Olympiad, were athletes run 12 times around the stadium, approximately 4 ½ kilometers. The athletes competed in groups of four, which were determined by drawing lots with the winners meeting the other winners until a final race was run. The track was composed of shifting sand, which gave way under the athletes` feet.
At this time the Pentathlon and Wrestling events were introduced. And later in 688 BC, Boxing; and likewise in 680 BC, the Four Horse Chariot Race; in 648 BC, the Pancration (a fierce combination of boxing and wrestling), and in 580 BC the Armed Race where the men traversed the stadium twice while heavily armed.
In the Pentathlon, those who jumped a certain distance qualified for the spear throwing; the four best then sprinted the length of the stadium, the three best then threw the discus, and the two best then engaged in a wrestling match to the finish.
As we saw earlier, rewards were simple crowns of wild olive, however, by the 61st Olympiad, it was decided to erect statues for the victors. But in order to deserve this honour, a victor had to win three times before a statue of him would be erected. Later, it was often the practice to make a breach in the walls of the city through which the victorious athletes returned.
During this period the games reached it climax and started to show the first signs of decay. Thriving for records and specialization to keep the interest of the crowds was only a short step away from professionalism.
When Macedonian troops invaded Greece, it put an end to Greek city-states. Greece now relieved of the political controversy, devoted themselves entirely to the Olympic Games. They stopped training their youth and just hired professional athletes and granted them citizenship. During the middle of the second century BC, Romans conquered Greece, and even though they had little interest in the games, they let them continue.
The Romans looked on athletics with contempt- stripping naked in public was something which was disgusting to the Romans. But they did realize the value of the Greek festivals, however, and Augustus, who had a genuine love for athletics, staged athletic games in a temporary wooden stadium erected near the Circus Maximus. Nero was also a keen patron of the festivals in Greece.
More than 250,000 spectators, witnessed chariot racing in the hippodrome and horse racing in the Circus Maximus, during the 4th century AD, in Rome. In the amphitheatre with accommodation for 50,000, animals and human beings were slaughtered in the name of sport.
During the next centuries, the original ideals of the games were thrown to dust, as they became more oriented towards profits; but they continued nevertheless.
In 393 AD, the Emperor Theodosius forbade the Games altogether. They had survived long enough; long enough to be referred to as immortal. A period of nearly 300 Olympiads or approximately 1200 years, and now that they are back in action, immortal is just the word for Olympics, which has a glorious past, and now moving towards an even more glorious future.
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